On Such Numbered Days
by Carlis.B
Summary: A man with one eye breaks Kiryu out of prison against his will, and brings him back to a city much colder than he remembers. Canon-divergence. Strong language. Takes place during Y1, Dark OOC chars. AO3 link: /works/20371357/chapters/48310429 (My country blocks FFnet, so please continue here)
1. Chapter 1

His name is One-Thousand-And-Five.

Yesterday he was someone else, had been given, with the manners of a machine and the politeness of policy, the name, Mr. One-Thousand-And-Six.

Tomorrow he will be someone else again, at the ringing of the perfunctory bell that divorces one day from another: Mr. One-Thousand-And-Four.

In between the going-aways and the coming-tos, he collects names like dust. He goes to the chow hall, and he becomes Wait Your Turn; in going to the yard he becomes Thirty Minutes More. At the shower he gains a uniquely ephemeral identity: Batch-Two-Quickly-Now. He goes in, let the water scald off his skin, be reborn in water burning so hot it strips him red. Coming out shiny like a cooked lobster, he can wear a new identity for the rest of the night: The Dogshit of Dojima.

—  
—

In his prison cell he is nothing, his action is waiting.

Waiting is not inaction, this is the second thing you learn in prison.

Before prison you have assumptions, and the assumption is that waiting is just something that happens while the rest of your life is unraveling, becoming, acquainting itself to happenstance; fusing itself, in chemical reaction to coincidence, so that events may soon happen. You are always about to do something while you are waiting: buy groceries, run errands, break someone's neck. Waiting is anticipation, a pre-meditated murder of time.

You were wrong, you know that now. Waiting is action, this is what you learn in prison.

It is an action that must be actively done. You fold yourself as small as possible into diamond-shaped patterns in the privacy of your cell (waiting is not done in public, it is sacred). You may sit cross-legged or seiza, stand on ceremony or leaning coolly, curled up in your bed with an arm tucked behind your head. Sucking your thumb, if you must.

Your exterior does not matter when you're waiting, what matters is your interior, which must be shrunk. You shrink yourself inside, small-small as possible, until you can be turned around and poured out, and out-plop comes your soul and it won't fill even a leaky thimble. You do this by stripping identities out of yourself.

Once upon a time you might have wanted to be great, for example, to follow in the footsteps of Kazama-san, to trace yourself in his shadow.

You take this desire and you erase it, line by line from the top, beginning first from the greatest concept then extending to everything else. You first forget the sentence whole; then you dismiss in inches and angry nights everything else: Kazama-san, the concept of greatness, the idea of footsteps, the desire of wanting, an entity of 'you', the stretching of time, once of the past, until at last you can be left alone with nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Then you wait.

—  
—

The first thing you learn in prison, is that you have no identity.

You're given an ID the moment you step in, and you think philosophical thoughts: ah, is this what I shall be? You were wrong, of course, because a series of number is an identity, and that identity is more solid than what you'll eventually end up with.

Your identity becomes the days you have left, because 8-1-5-7-6 rankles your ears and bedevils your patience. At roll call, they put existential fear into you: will you be here for eighty thousand days, each by minutes longer than the last? You cannot. You fear. Your soul trembles and weep. You cast it off and take a new name: Mr. Three-thousand-six-hundred, all ten years to be waited tattooed on you; it is a long time but it can be waited. In contrast eighty thousand is forever.

When you take on the others it becomes easier; take them on in the secret corners of the prison where lips can split, skulls can break, nails torn one by one out of grasping flesh. There are many corners where the guards don't see, willfully blind, and here you can be beaten by anyone: your seniors, your juniors, your hitmen, your old friends, your new enemies. Gradually in blood you extract from them new names:

The Dogshit of Dojima, that fucking backstabbing cunt, the lil Tojo shit, why ya staring, asswankcuntsucker, goddamned cocksucker, oi fuck off, are-ya-happy-now-ya-murdering-cunt, and so on.

They're fine names; at least they don't have numbers.

—  
—

The man with the one eye comes and instantly breaks every rule. He is an earthquake: in his presence you must obey new rules, run for high ground, cower in clear spaces.

He comes, swinging his hips like a new officer, twirling his hands holding an invisible bat, eating with his lips a pop song five years too new for you. He peels back the skin of the cell the moment he arrives. He overturns containers. He looks into the toilet, opens up the flusher, cracks open the sink to examine the deep sadness of the hole in the middle. He takes out his sheets, folds it messily so that he can lay in it like a well fucked boy.

All this you see, his cell is right opposite yours.

"Yo," He says. He puts his legs up in a cross, carefully, making space for the steel tips he must have worn once. He straightens the eyepatch he was allowed (they had tried taking it from him, but realized too late it was too much a part of him, it would have killed him).

"What's yer name?"

You are surprised. It is a terrible question, a faux pas, an abhorrent question never asked in prison. How could he, how dare he?

A name? He wants a name? But you don't have a name, you're a condemned spirit. You've worked hard to get this far. The Japanese dream: work so hard you don't know who you are. Once you had a name, and it'd laid discarded in a laundry pile. You wait for him to understand how rude he's been and go away.

"Oi ya deaf? Ya want me to go over there and beat it out of ya?"

There's three feet of corridor and two sets of bars separating you, and you see that he means it.

You lick your cracked, chapped lips, tried hard to recall...

"My… Name?"

"Just my luck," He swore. "I'm roomed with a fuckin' idiot. Your name! Your name! Are ya daft?"

He needs to be patient. Names are the first thing to go, and the last thing to be replaced. He doesn't know what he's asking, demanding a name. Oh, the weeks to come, wracked in the throes of identity. Does he not know? Does he not care, how much this hurt, to recall a name?

Reluctantly, slowly (time itself is slow here) it is said.

"My name is… Kazuma. Kiryu. Kazuma, Kiryu, Kazuma. Yes, that's my name."

Oh, he says, mouth perfect on an O. The Dragon of Dojima? That Kazuma-fucking-Kiryu? That you? The Dragon of Dojima? The fucking Dragon of Dojima?

"Hell yeah! Always wanted to fight me a dragon! Sit tight in that cell, dragonshit, because I'm comin' for ya Kiryu-chan!"

—  
—

Majima Goro was introduced to him in bits of nerve, bones, and tissues.

Kiryu goes as far away from him as he can. Now that he has identity it is not so easy to walk the hallways of the prison; it clings to him like bits of plastic wrap, tight and suffocating, each piece determined to make themselves be remembered. Every nook and cranny and day and night that once he'd lived as a young man of Kamurocho, clamored to be the one to dice his anonymity to pieces. He will not be forgotten, he cannot forget, not if they have any say about it.

In the manner of Majima's walking and the dance of his fingers on the cutlery he sees the glittering manner of a younger Kamurocho, a visitor, a stranger, here to tell him: time has passed, but not enough time yet so that you can see it firsthand. Time is here to visit. The outside world has been let in, poured angry but fearsome into his cells.

The rattling of Majima's bars replaces his roll call, his silent private mornings.

"Hey," He screams (he is always screaming, he has no other verb). "Hey Kiryu-chan! Wake up, I'm bored!"

At night he rattles them like chains, screaming again: "Tell me a bedtime story, Kiryu-chan! Hey? Ya ignorin' me? I can't sleep, why don't ya stay awake too? We could play imaginary shogi, how 'bout that?"

He is_ gyoku_; the king that has come to sweep all of Kiryu's neat, patiently-allocated time away and replaced it with himself, loud and trying, rolling over all the hallways into the secret corners where he is allowed to beat up Kiryu.

The first time he does this he shatters bone, broke clean through in one piercing fist Kiryu's entire cheekbone, part of his jaw. Lovingly Majima brought him to the sink and tended his wounds; he tended him five times, smashing Kiryu up-down-up-down onto the metal until it shatters Kiryu's nerves, it was so loud, and the metal had caught him in the ear. Majima left him tended, tender, tenderized, lying in a pool of blood leaving him rapidly for the freedom of the drains. The water, slow and warm now, cascading over him, lights bright and disorienting, the smell of soap mixed with the secrets of prison bathrooms.

He is made to realize he is_ fuhyo_; a low mere degraded pawn. Like a pawn he could only move forwards, could not retreat, could then only be pushed into Majima's arms, holding him in a chokehold over metal plates of curry and rice.

"Ya not such hot shit, Dragon of Dojima," Majima tells him, whispering in his ear. "Ya just plain shit. I'm so disappointed. Ya disappointin' me here, with your lousy ass performance. Kiryu-chan, ya need to shape up. Ya the best entertainment I've got around here and you're so. goddamned. boring."

He cracked his neck and laughed the whole time Kiryu goes down.

Once Kiryu remembers, he would have soared with Majima in his clutches and brought him down like thunder, would have stepped on him and never realized it - ah, might have thought, it's dirtying the soles of my shoe, the little soul of Mad Dog Majima stuck in the rubbery meat he walks on.

"Kiryu-chan!" The hound howls. "Kiryu-Kazuma-chan! Come on, let's play imaginary shogi! Are ya mad I beat ya? Or are ya mad that I beat ya up? Don't be such a princess, Kiryu-chan! Let's play, let's play, let's play!"

The hellhound becomes a puppy at night, frolicking in the lonesome cells; his cell bounded by Kiryu's bounded by others. Only other people don't matter to him; only strangely, Kiryu mattered to him. Kiryu was fun, Kiryu was gokudo, Kiryu had a past. The others Majima couldn't wake up, couldn't ask: who are you? What did you do to end up here? They can't answer him, all of them mute and anonymous, because most of them have worked hard to forget, and unlike Kiryu could not be brought back.

With their sad sunken eyes and closed eyelids they watch Kiryu and Majima play imaginary shogi; kei-ma leapt over kin over gin, pushing aside hisha, storming onto kaku. Who are you, Kiryu whispers one night in bravado. He pressed his head back against the cell bars, sitting with his eyes closed to better remember the shogi board. Hands folded loosely across his lap, moving invisible pieces around.

I am Kei-ma, Majima whispered. Kiryu collects this identity, examine it in the moonlight, thinks fragmented thoughts -

"Are ya an idiot, Kiryu-chan? It just looks like my name - it's a joke! Ya stupid ass thinking it means anything?"

He grinned, laughing so hard he overturns their imaginary board; neither can remember now which pieces were where. "This prison getting to ya, you're a goddamned old fuck now."

—  
—

Trapped now in the machine of his identity, Kiryu loses his numbers. He realized this one day when he had to go down to the office, to ask with form in hand exactly how many days he had to wait; the answer came back and surprised him, he is holding less numbers than he thought he had. They had slipped through his fingers and rolled into forgotten corners when he wasn't watching.

He is now Mr. Nine-Hundred-and-Fifty, a whole month having passed him in scorn. Those numbered days he could no longer wear; Majima had forced his identity back onto him and they won't go on now, came on like a loose coat, baggy in the elbows. He can no longer wait, at least wait the way he used to. There is no patience to be had, with Majima strolling bored and callous into his privacy, intruding with answers, leaving with questions.

Why are you here, Majima-san, he asked - desperate to give Majima more form, more identity, to know more so that he can become less to Kiryu.

What crime did you commit? Who did you kill? How did you live?

"Wouldn't ya like to know, Kiryu-chan? I'm bored, bored, so maybe I'll tell ya - but ya have to beat me first."

They dance in the yard. They have exactly six minutes before the officers come with batons and extra days, so they must be quick, trading fists until their faces are bloated with blood and torn epidermis; Kiryu dancing better now but still far from a match to Majima, so that Majima danced with him only because he had no better partners. A fallen dragon made of shit was still better than just plain shit. Majima pivots on the officer, says: it's me, I started this.

An act of generosity. It surprises Kiryu, he doesn't know what to say, Majima taking this sin into the confession of his records.

"I ain't plannin' ta stay here twenty-five years, so what's a few months that I won't be around for?" He bared nasty teeth at Kiryu. "I ain't like ya. I ain't the wallowing sort. I'll be out before six months is up."

Oh, Kiryu said. Glad but sad, sad and glad. He is relieved that Majima in leaving will restore him to his formless mass again; bittersweet that he loses such a strict mold. Kiryu Kazuma Kazama Nishikiyama Dojima. Things he can't forget as long as Majima is around, rooting him, anchoring him without his permission and against his wants.

"Whoooo—"

—  
—

The days are slipping away so fast now that he has to seize it with both hands clenched so tight his knuckles go white. Stay, he commanded. Stay. Seizing his miserable days in his hands, he watched Majima prepare for flight. By inches and minutes and lost seconds he withdraws from Kiryu, become more and more likely to disappear during yard time and bath time and free time, to meet with associates strange and shapeless huddling in the other yard.

Lined up against theirs but separated by a fence is the small-timers, the low-hitters, the off-ballers, little people who won't be doing more than six months in the most deprived luxuries, off-site beside them, counting less than one-hundred-eighty-days.

It is these people that Majima meets, forehead-to-forehead like lovers, whispering convoluted plans calculated like algebra. When they hide, when they bother to hide, Majima scratches at the fence with loose-tipped fingers, plucking the fence like a guitar, plucking tunes at his associates until they come: unwilling but bowed by Majima's boys who'd sequestered themselves in the smaller prison.

Where is — He demanded.

What is —

How shall —

How does the flight mechanism work? How does Kiryu find out? He finds out in nerves; Majima sometimes, sidling up to him, having the nerve to ask: I have a question. Where is the control room for —

Kiryu frowning, turning away, saying go, go I don't know, don't trouble me, I've never seen, I couldn't possibly know, I never meant to go, never meant to leave, this prison is for me, nine-hundred-days only left to be. Majima beating him with his fists until he lay shivering and nurturing wounds on the ground, beating his identity into him.

Tell me what you see, Majima demanded.

"Kiryu-chan, don't ya lie to me. I've been watchin' ya watchin' and ya know it. Ya just don't know that you know it. Well, that's what I'm for. I'm going to beat your piece of shit memory into your head." He seized Kiryu by the collar, lift him up so that he could be closer to the sun, shaking him over and over again.

"Tell me! Where is it? You know where it is!"

Come, Kiryu told him, spitting out blood. Led him to the dark places in the prison where things can be seen, push him into corners angled right, take him away from plans angled wrong. You're not doing this right, he told Majima. This control room is patrolled all the time, six-at-a-go, it's a no-go, a no-show, what you want, really want, is this other place. You won't know it unless you've been like me; a man without identity, they don't let anyone see if they've got eyes. The crow-pig comes and pluck out your eye, one on each side, if they see you waiting to watch.

"I get it," Majima said. "Thanks."

More, "Hey, ya wanna come with—"

No, he said, he only had nine hundred more to go, it didn't mean anything to him. All he wants is for Majima to leave, and quickly - so that he can once more be subsumed by anonymity.

—  
—

In bits and pieces he watch Majima assembled his plan; in his patience Kiryu had learned to see everything, and in so seeing saw that his plan would work before Majima himself knows it. Majima shrunk and wrapped himself in ignorance until the plan itself is executed. He goes with the flow, himself. Doesn't need to have foresight. He'll work it until it works, even if he fails this time. They waited calm and nerveless in their cells for the escape that will come soon.

"It'll work," Kiryu told him sleepily. Tomorrow, he's thinking. This will be their last game of imaginary shogi, so he slipped: slipped the golden knife in and ate Majima's king whole.

"Damn, ya good, Kiryu-chan. Ya totally wreck me this time."

"Thank you for teaching me how to play."

"Teach ya? Kiryu-chan, ya always knew how to play. Don't ya know? Don't ya remember? You could do anything you wanted - that's why you were the dragon. All I did was make ya remember."

Oh, he doesn't remember anymore; all he'd wanted to was forget. Tomorrow when Majima is gone, he'll go back to forgetting again. Reverse-engineering an onion, putting back layer by layer his thin skin to cover the sound of the silence inside. Eight-hundred-something more days to be lived. The days had leapt from his hands but he'll have them back under rein again. When Majima is unleashed.

"Good luck, Majima-san," He said.

"Thanks, Kiryu-chan. Couldn't have done this without ya," Majima said.

—  
—

He comes awake, frightened by the silence.

Kiryu sat in the dark and listened: there were no sounds. Not just the greater sounds of the outside world: cameras that had stopped working, alarms silenced and napping, doors grinding to a halt in mid-air. There is silence in him everywhere that frightens him - he can no longer hear the sound of forgetfulness, he's forgotten how to forget...

A knife pressed itself tightly to his jugular, nicked him not because it'd miscalculated. Its owner was just sadistic, wanted him to bleed, wanted to see the sheen of a dragon's blood.

"Kiryu-chan." whispered Majima. "Ya coming with me."

"No," He gasped. "No." He wanted to stay, was terrified by the outer world.

"I ain't givin' ya a choice. Ya coming with me, whether ya like it or no. Ya my present to that fucking Nishikiyama cunt."

He pushed his knife in. Hissed orders at Kiryu until reluctantly, Kiryu unfolded himself and groped with seeking hands in the darkness. At length he found the thread of the plan, and began to follow it as it unraveled in the darkness of the prison, its silvery length glowing with hope. They walked down the halls quiet and empty illuminated by the shining spool. Somewhere somehow Majima had secreted all the officers away.

The inmates lined row by row in their rat-holes to watch them, trapped in their cell that wouldn't open. When they realized what had happened, they howled like hell itself - unfair! unfair! unfair! - and hands scratched, brushed, rend at them from all sides. The inmates will drag them down to the pits if they could only reach...

Outside.

Air the same but different; they're on the other side of the fence now. There is a motorcycle waiting, a snakeskin jacket, a small tanto and a helmet. A set of clothes prepared by someone who thought Kiryu was as big as he'd seen Kiryu last. Untrue, he has shrunk now, made skinny by the weak broth of prison.

"Put on the helmet," Majima said. There was only one.

"Don't you—"

"I can't fuckin' see with a black glass on, asshole. Vision strictly 10/20. 'sides," He smiles. "That skull of yours worth ten of mine, isn't it?"

Kiryu knew nothing; there was too much not being said. He climbed onto the motorcycle, clamped loose hands around Majima's middle, and then they flew, across snowy landscapes into the cold and a freedom he never wanted but had received.


	2. Chapter 2

They go all the way through the night like a whipping boy, traveling many miles (how many? enough to rattle teeth and seal eyes) on the motorcycle that melted dirty snow under them until it made a shifting river.

Kiryu, holding on tightly, tried to ask: where are we going? Do you have a plan? Are you cold?

The wind is flaying the flesh off his face, frost in the air coming at them in droves. Hidden behind in the safety of Majima's back, he could feel the bone-chilling wind that ate bones. What must it feel, to be in front, without the warmth of a helmet or a body to hide behind. Are you cold? He tries again - if you could only tell me where we're going I can drive, perhaps, with a little bit of practice and falling off a few times.

Majima said nothing, his lips frozen shut a while ago. If they do not leave the storm soon, he will die with his foot on the pedal.

Kiryu tried in his own selfish way to help; he held on tightly, willing the corpse in front of him to warm. It is selfish because he is a trembling thief, hoping to steal a few inches of heat for himself too. It is too cold, too cold... He cannot think of anything else.

Gradually he must have fallen asleep, came awake only when light had broken the horizon in with an angry red-orange eye. Sunrise then, coming early to this parts, meaning that it is now four, maybe four thirty at the latest. Is Majima alive? He tried to ask and received no answer; possibly the man might have died in the middle of the night and kept his foot on, so that they'll travel now in a straight line until they reach the end of the island-and-the-world.

O but a tree! A tree in the way! He rattles the man, and Majima too came awake. The motorcycle swerved narrowly, so close he could smell and peel bark off it if he tried, and they came away a few inches from death. The man is alive then; this is the only indication he gets.

Before the sun is old enough to warm they reached their destination (is it planned? was this a destination, or an accident?). Majima parked the motorcycle by a shack, laid it on its side, and shoveled snow and sleet onto it. Hide, Kiryu thought. He is hiding it; they must hide, we must be hidden. If the prison finds them now they'll be imprisoned forever, their days eighty-thousand and counting. He helped, with cold awful hands to scoop some ice onto the black bike. It is not much help but he tried.

They entered the shack. It'd been unlocked and waiting, had prepared a meal for them to come into. It is a warm meal, vegetables in soup and rice. Someone had left recently in the middle of the night to make way for them, his replacement.

Majima pointed at the food, thought: eat. He had no tongue until it thawed. They ate, but the cold had drawn out their appetite. Soup finished but rice half-eaten, they slept curled back to back against the stove. If Kiryu could have cut himself to pieces and boiled himself in the pot he would have done so; there's no name for the kind of cold that comes from deep winter braved with a thin summer jacket. Majima shivered so hard his bones rattled tat-tat-tat against the stove. He moans something in the middle of the afternoon that Kiryu doesn't catch; something sad.

Evening they found some cigarettes, and smoke it one by one until Kiryu said: "We should stop, we should bring this with us."

He is saying with these words: I am an accomplice now. I am on your side... For now. Majima pockets this advice and the secrets, wrapped himself with a blanket. They took the motorcycle and went on; it will be another night of freezing.

—

Majima must have died in his seat. Kiryu came awake and it was the middle of the night, the moon bright, offering no information except a stream of ready-stock silvery light that didn't indicate the time. When? When did they stop? How long has it been?

Majima-san, he tried to say, to find that he'd breathe cold air and his tongue was frozen too. He could only shake Majima, rapping by Morse onto him: Wake up! Wake up!

Kiryu got down from the motorcycle, thrust his feet one-two into deep holes, and stepped Majima-wards to check him. Majima was slumped over the motorcycle, lashes frozen to his cheek. He was breathing but asleep, perhaps had fallen asleep while he'd still been driving, before they'd struck the tree. They were unscathed but covered by a light dusting of snow. They hadn't been here long but might be here forever - if Kiryu does not act.

Wake up, he says, holding the man's face between his hands. You must wake up, Majima-san, only you know where we are going...

He pressed his ear against the man's lip, repeated over and over again like a prayer to a fickle god: where are we going? where are we going? Tell me and I'll get us there - until he got a small pained whisper, a cry made small: the road south, interstate 8, another shack...

He took the reins of the motorcycle and rode down the road, pushed Majima close against the handles (warmth, engine) and wrapped himself as tightly as he could around the man. He is no thief now, holding out his warmth as charity. He got them back on the interstate and kept going. The rivers they left behind grew long. He found the shack, and decanted the dying-dead man into it.

The shack was a twin of the first, with twin cuisines in it. He lifted the pot of soup and brought it to Majima, dribbled down his face and into his lungs, wrapped his hands around the steel - and when they'd scraped the bottom of the bowl (him eating, Majima choking it down unconsciously) he stuck it into Majima's jacket. It was ugly, and looked stupid. But every bit of warmth matters. The rice could wait; later when Kiryu knows if he has to share with a corpse.

Kiryu stripped the man and himself bare, pressed them both together into the blanket and under the small mountain of their clothes; there was warmth but not much, most of it was him and the soup. Majima remained cold as a rock. Somewhere perhaps in glittering Kamurocho this might be sordid; here it is only survival. He held himself to Majima tightly, breathed as closely as possible without melting their faces together. Like Majima's collaborators from months ago, they slept forehead-to-forehead.

Later Majima tells him: we have to share the rice. He won't be a corpse after all. He came awake with his lashes melting, streaking his face like tears.

Where? He asked. Oh. He said. Oh. You got us here then. Was I? I was? I see.

Quietly: Thanks. I guess I would have died, wouldn't I, if it hadn't been for ya?

Kiryu didn't say anything. Didn't understand why things had to be said. He would have done it for anyone. It is Majima who is not used to kindness, not him.

Disoriented and naked the man was beautiful. It's not the first time Kiryu thinks this, but it's one of those thoughts that don't invite attention, came with no plan of action. It was a fact: long and loose-limbed and young, Majima was beautiful. Wet from half-thawed ice, sweating where he could, he climbed nearer to the stove and sunned himself in it while Kiryu watched.

"We can take turns," Kiryu told him.

"Whazzat?"

"On the motorcycle. Hours divided you-and-me. Keeps the cold out."

"Ya think I'll trust yer ass with a spoon?"

"I could have made away with more than just a spoon, last night."

"So-the-fuck-what?"

"So maybe bank in your trust issues, and let me take a shift before we end up skidding to our deaths off a cliff because you damned well fell asleep." He lit a cigarette. "I don't give a shit about you. But I give a shit about living. I won't go back to the cops. Got nothing for me."

"No fucking way. I've got a job to do and I'm doing it."

Yes, he means. He relented. Before all this is over Kiryu will find out again and again that Majima never means anything he says, never says what he means.

They packed up everything in the shack: another blanket, the damned straw mat, the extra packs of cigarettes. Then they got on and drove off again. They are going in circles to keep the hounds off their trail.

Another night of freezing comes.

—

—

"Two tickets for Imabetsu, sweetie," Majima said, smiling sunny at the attendant. A totem pole; turned around scowling at Kiryu. "Oi, ya looking for a way out, gramps?"

Kiryu was looking at the expanse of snow field; Gaussian blurred, white-out. This place is small-town, all around. If you could call it a town. It's a shit stain in the middle of nowhere. They'd parked the bike in the hourly parking and left it to be clamped by better people than they.

"Seems kind of an obvious move."

"Sure. Ain't take long 'fore they find the bike, I reckon."

"Where we going then."

"South, but skips and hops. We're landing around, coming back up, going downtown on a ferry later on. It's all planned out, don't nag."

Majima chased him across the plastic train station chairs, until they sat inches away from each other. Majima will not let him die on the tracks, or buy a soda, or just about anything. He didn't have permission to fart, if Majima had his way. The knife always quick and stealthy, slipping in-and-out of his jacket like a tease. He thought of the shape of their adventures, the contents of the shacks, asked:

"You didn't plan your escape for yourself."

"Hmm? Sure. Always been the plan to take ya along."

"Is that why you were in there?"

"What, prison? It weren't the plan, then it was. Ain't matter to me so much, so I said why the hell not? Earns me a couple of favors, figured I could get my leg up. Get myself back into the ring." He took out one of their stashed cigarette, lit it and offered it to Kiryu. Had another for himself.

"I got my own reasons to be in there. Nothin' to do with ya. Or maybe it does? I won't know, til I get back. If the boys are still holdin' the fort that is." A brief chase of worry. "They better, or there'll be hell to pay."

Oh, he said. He took the tickets and the schedule from Majima, then the other tickets that matter. They sat down to wait; the cold train station had nothing on what they'd been through. The snow field was nothing, just a drop in the ocean, the kind of storm they'd seen. Majima might have lost a toe, the mewling weakling, only too stubborn to say so. Could be. Kiryu didn't understand him and probably won't ever.

They had a long wait for the train to come. In angles increasingly acute Majima dozed off, first on his shoulder, then in Kiryu's lap, unaware, unprotected, mumbling again sad things Kiryu had no idea (or interest) about.

You're so weak, he thought, thinking about everything he'd seen. You're too weak for the gokudo, what the fuck are you doing here. You can punch, dice, slice me up like a radish, but you're weak inside. You don't belong. You're only playing mad dog. More accurate to just say you're just a sad bitch. You got nothing, nothing on what I'll become.

He smoked his cigarette, hatching himself from the inside.

—

—

On the train they sat with their elbows in each other's way. Kiryu even shrunk, shadow of his former self, was still wide enough to get his shoulders in the way. Get the fuck off, Majima said, shoving him aside whenever he came too near, swayed in by the train's rhythms. Don't worry, Kiryu said, if I wanted anything of mine in your face you'd know it.

"That a threat, Kiryu-chan? Maybe I could kick your ass a coupla times to remind you 'bout when we were in."

Oh, he wasn't inviting an asskicking. He was just rude because he'd seen Majima stumbling; he had no illusions, knew that Majima fully restored was stronger than him in a fight. It's just that (humans, you know) it's hard to fear someone you've seen at their worst - frozen with their balls all shriveled up like little prunes. The enigma is reversed, receded, revealing the little boils of humanity underneath. Now all you gotta do is decide if you wanna lance it.

He waited, he watched. Kiryu's identity sat itself more squarely in his skins. He realized it's his hobby and habit now, to people-watch. It had become so without his assent.

He looked at the phones of strangers, this far out and already newer than anything he's seen, doing incredible things out of science fiction. The subtle changes in the train - now wider, narrower, longer, thinner, faster. There were TVs now, clearer than anything before, nothing on what's to come: showing photos of him and Majima, over and over again. Kiryu when he'd been leaner and younger, not as gaunt. Majima's very close to how he looked like now.

This man really isn't cut out for this...

He unwound himself from his seat.

"Hey, where the fuck are ya going."

Kiryu pointed subtly at the TV with his thumb, removed his jacket and threw it over Majima.

"Put this over yourself. Pretend you're asleep. I'm going to the shop."

"No—"

He was quiet but firm. "I'm not going to throw myself off something traveling at three hundred miles per hour. Now shut up, and sit _down_."

Kiryu let the carriages come at him one-on-one until he came upon the last carriage, a small corner peddling merchandise from the train company. Mostly junk straight out of the factories: umbrellas that will break in a few uses, hats with logos you don't want, sunscreen for your destination - and some clothing. He bought with Majima's money: sunglasses, two hoodies, a toiletry kit with a shaver. He took a smaller yellow hoodie for Majima; perhaps he would like it better, the snakeskin jacket had been tailored and it'd been yellow. A little pleasure. He went back to Majima with them.

Oh, Majima said, blinking fake-sleep away. Thanks. Went to the toilet when it was late and no one was watching; shaved and came back both eyes blinded instead of one. He did not look pleased at the yellow. He hadn't noticed. He hadn't notice many things.

"Guess ya got more brains than ya look," Majima said.

"Been around. Rubs off on you."

"Thought you were a real stupid ox when I first saw you."

Kiryu is not surprised. Does not care. He only knows now. Someone somewhere was doing something, moving the skies, blowing the winds. That person clearly wasn't Majima, so he had potential - could be an ally, if Kiryu could read his card right, this wild card. He will need allies where he's going, he's thinking. He could do a lot worse than a beautiful, deadly man with a knife.

He thinks: Let's see if I can respect him.

Wake me up when we get there, he said. He wanted to see every inch of the welcome they receive.

—


	3. Chapter 3

They flew south as migrating birds, flying in concentric circles so confusing, they had no idea where they were most of the time, couldn't tell you unless they were near a map. They went forwards, then backwards, jumped off trains to slip into the backs of buses. Moved up the aisle into ferries, and then onto bikes that waited for them in alleys, like a familiar whore. Cars spat them out at train stations and drove away, then it was trains again: two, three trains swinging like a pendulum on the map.

Where are we going, Majima-san? Can't you tell me? He asked. But the man is closed off here as he was on the bike. Saving his life didn't matter to him. He wasn't about to bond with Kiryu.

They peeled themselves off grimy (out here all the trains are grimy, nothing like they were in Tokyo) trains and buses, to go into motels through the backdoor. Renting hotels by the hour, rooms smelling sour. Majima had nothing much to say that wasn't a threat.

Good nights, for him: "Ya better not move a fuckin' inch that I can see, Kiryu-chan. I got my eye on you 24/7."

Good mornings, as so: "Where the fuck you been then? Looked like ya move, ain't I said ya don't? Did ya snuck out in the night, did ya try?"

Baseless accusations. He didn't try to run. Why bother? He already knows where they're going. At the end of this convoluted mess, designed more to humiliate him than to save him, they're going to end up in Kamurocho. Once he'd told Nishiki: all the shit in Tokyo flows into Kamurocho. Nishiki had laughed then; it's like you're saying we're trash, Kiryu, don't be so goddamned negative, have a drink or ten...

They slept, the two of them, curled up in dirty beds double-on-one. Majima had a preference, and that preference was cheap. He wanted the cheapest room always, single bed if they had it, and smelly under stairs or construction; didn't matter to him if they could shave a couple of hundred yens off.

"Your head's worth a lot," He told KIryu. "But I ain't seen it yet and I don't spend money I don't got."

Wise, Kiryu said. Didn't care. He slept on the floors just to get away from the insistent boniness of Majima's frame. He didn't want to wake up with a boner one night and get killed for something he couldn't help; least-way no way Majima would listen if he says: I don't want to fuck you, my body does. Majima didn't seem like the type to care about such fine (but significant) distinctions.

Didn't help - Majima hit him anyway. He hits him for something familiar to Kiryu. For control. The more the situation slipped out of his control, the more he had to hit. He would run aground of ideas at payphones, talking to someone mysterious in short stolen conversations. Instructions that came, meandering and convoluted. He'd come back, vibrating with rage, smoke half a pack of cigarettes, and turn on Kiryu.

For control: he has to show Kiryu exactly who is in charge; smashed him headlong into the bathroom mirror until the reflection showed twelve of them, all of them drip-dripping blood into the sink, where it swirls away in loosening spirals.

"I fucking hate ya," He said. "You and your whole family are cunts."

"Was that Kazama-san?"

"Why the fuck I gotta tell ya anything? Get fucked!"

Well, you can catch a dog better with bones than honey. Kiryu went away one night to look for dreamless shogi, sneaking out on padded feet away from Majima while the man slept, turning round and round in the vice of his nightmares. Kiryu drifted through the 4 a.m night until he came across that staple of every city: a few men littered around a shogi board. The game is one-fourth of their possessions, the other being a tarp-tent and a barrel of flames, illuminating their rapidly degrading lives. Homeless fucks, Nishiki calls 'em. They're like rats, every city's got some.

"What can I do for you," Kiryu asked, "so you will give me that board?"

They looked him up-and-down; "Why don't you take it? You look like you can try."

I'm not that kind of person, he said. If I was I've forgotten how to be, am actively trying to forget how to be. I'll do you a favor. I want the board.

Everyone has people they'd like to see beaten up. The oldest profession in the world: whoring, and clubbing people over the heads with a stick. He comes back to the hotel sticky with blood, fingerprints bloody on the board.

The men had laughed: "You're a funny kind of guy, Kiryu-san. You beat up folks for us to get the board, but won't beat us up to take it. Your principles are ignorant."

Oh yes, but he has principles, that's what important, and gripping onto them tightly he slipped back into the hotel, through the backdoor, up the four flights of narrow stairs that brush him shoulders to shoulder, and into their sour room overlooking other people's laundry. He's too late; Majima had emptied the bed of himself, and filled himself into a chair.

"Yo," He said. "Ya ready to cry?"

The tears exit from wounds on his head instead of his eyes, big fat huge tears crying blue bloody murder. Majima had done him one better on his midnight errand: Majima had gone out to buy a baseball bat, just so he could hit him hard and heavy until he saw stars. Where in the fuck he got it, that's what Kiryu wants to know. Fucking Poppo cunts helping murderers nationwide.

He laid wallowing in the wet carpet. The ceiling is a familiar sight, as was the taste of welling blood in his mouth. Why, he wondered. Why. Are his reasons his own? If they are, why doesn't he know what they are? He laid there until Majima set up the board, then climbed up to join the game. They'd lost two of the pieces in the fight, the kings were nowhere to be found. They had to use a crumpled up memo pad, pastel yellow and pink each. It blows around with the sneaky wind, and they can never be sure if the game they're winning is the same as the one they'd been playing.

—

—

They came into the city while it rained, and to avoid becoming thoroughly wet they slipped into a store advertising - LIQUOR - in modern English neons, the Japanese posters aging and unfashionable all along its windows. They pretended to be connoisseurs, walked down the aisles of whiskies and wines endlessly debating with themselves which vintage was better. Eventually they took too long and the rain showed no signs of stopping, and embarrassed, Majima and he pocketed a random cheap wine with an unpronounceable Spanish name.

A gift, Majima said, to sooth nerves. My boys like this shit. They'll be happy to see me; I've been gone for a while.

Your boys?

"Safehouse," Majima said. "I'm gon' tie you up 'round a stick there, Kiryu-chan. Or on a chair if that's your style. Got some errands to run, so ya gotta stay put for a sec."

They walk in the diminished rain northwards, almost exiting Kamurocho (the train had spat them out very far just to be on the safe side), and came turning onto a suburb, poor and rundown like those Kiryu used to live in. Apartments and mansions in six packs, each unit sub-divided again by poor renters. The city had aged badly, all its buildings now older than Kiryu by some.

Majima found the door after walking pass it six times (it had neither sign nor number), rapped it hard, waited, rapped it harder, waited - thinking, is no one home? They had almost gone when the rain relented, and they heard the sound of sneaky scuffling feet behind the door.

"Hey! What the fuck? I hear you in there. Tagawa! Tagawa, that you?" Majima kicked the door. "Open the damned door!"

A long embarrassed silence said: "Oyaji?"

"Why don't ya come out here and find out."

"Oyaji..."

"Open the damned door, idiot. Did ya lose your keys again? Open a window then, 'sake, I'm getting soaked out here."

"Oyaji," He said. "I can't."

Majima in disbelief: "Fuck?"

"Oyaji," The man said. "Oyaji. I'm sorry. I can't. We can't. There's been word. It's different now."

"Ya know what's different? What's different is ya used to have balls. Open the door. I'll kick it down, if ya won't."

"I can't. They've said so."

"Who said so." When the answer came unvolunteered, he kicked the door hard enough to step through it. They could see through the hole some dirty jeans. They couldn't see but could imagine many other pairs of them, hiding one behind another silently in the house. With effort Majima could have torn the door down by the hinges; certainly with Kiryu's help he could. Majima knew though, that there were some doors you can't kick down.

"Who said so, Tagawa. Why don't ya be a good boy and tell me?"

"Nishikiyama..."

"Okay." He said, cutting him off. "Alright, okay, sure. Of course it was him. Fucking cunt! I'll be going then. Ya boys watch ya fucking backs. Don't let nobody kill you before I do."

"Oyaji," The man said. "Oyaji? I'm so sorry. We couldn't. We tried. We weren't enough."

Added quiet and resentful: "Maybe it'd have been different if you were here. You know?"

"Not like I wanted to be gone. Well, fuck then." Majima said, casual almost, and took Kiryu away down the wet pavement. The rain had cruelly retreated, so that embarrassed and angry, Majima couldn't hide in it. Kiryu watched him huddle inwards, walking on sullen heels with his arms wrapped around himself, a self-hug, the kind of shit only weak people need. But Majima isn't that weak… Just sad. Morose. It's a bigger betrayal than he's let on. He'd put a lot of emotional eggs in this basket, and found when he came back someone had broken in and made omelettes, not even really because they were hungry, but out of spite, just because they could.

So, Nishiki was strong now, was he? Strong enough to say, and having said, be obeyed? Interesting.

Kiryu followed Majima around, walking like an obedient ox. In the end he saw that Majima had no clue where they were supposed to go. In fact he had not even thought about the question.

"We should find a place to spend the night." He suggested.

Majima looked at him, blinked lost eyes. "So...? Many places, ain't there. Hotels all up and down Kamurocho. Got the whole damned district. What kind ya want? It's my treat, it's on me. Just say it. We could go classy, get the whole damned waterbed. Maybe fucking drown in it. Whatcha want, Kiryu-chan? It's all on me."

"The usual."

"That ain't fun. Aren't we celebratin'?"

"We are?"

"Sure, ya first night back in Kamurocho, Kiryu-chan! Ya gotta round up friends, fuck some booze and drink some girls! What else?"

Thought: I'd rather fuck you, Majima-san. Your ass looks better than anything money could buy; the kind of money we have anyway.

He said instead: "Don't really have friends."

"No? That's depressing. Hey, at least ya got family, even if they're all cunts."

"The usual," He said.

They went and found with no trouble another sleazy flea-mall. In Kamurocho the cheap stuff are the love hotels, so they ended up with a room with green-red lights from the disco era and a mirror on the ceiling, the better with to see their sins.

I'm not really in the mood to see myself all night, Majima grumbled.

"Close your eye then. You got it better than me. Only half the work." Chortling until he choked, Majima drank the whole bottle of wine down in one gulp, shook out the last mouthful and gave the almost-empty bottle to Kiryu.

"It's on me," He said, and slept.

To entertain himself, Kiryu watched TV until he was sleepy, switching channels blue-glow-by-blue-glow until he saw everything that needed to be seen. Then he lit his cigarette (had bought again his favorite brand the moment they were back in the city) and when he was done, methodically stubbed it on Majima's cheek. He made circles of ash one by one, black buds all in a row. They only burn enough to sting, if you don't grind it down.

Majima opened his eye on the seventeenth stab, looked deeply into the dying orange glow. "Ya got weird taste, Kiryu-chan. This your fetish?"

"Just wanted to see how much I could do before you wake." Weakness is his fetish.

"Oh. Well. Doesn't matter anyway." He wiped the streaks of ash off his face, and looking like a warrior, watched the glowing cigarette. They weren't it seemed, talking of tobacco anymore. Kiryu felt around in Majima's loneliness for an opportunity to talk.

"Who gave you that? The eye."

"Mom."

He chuckled, said, no really.

"Shimano."

"You his boy?"

"Ya said that like I get fucked up the ass by him. Well, ya half right. He's the boss."

"How come then? Bungled a job?"

Majima groped around the bedroom in answer, until Kiryu extracted a beer and put it cold and sweating into his hands. He'd gone out earlier to buy some. He figured Majima would need it.

"A long time ago." He said, cracking it. "Other city. Whole other place. Worlds ago, man. He was a fuckwad, that Shimano."

Was?

"Huh? Ya don't know? He's offed ages ago. When you gone in? 1995? Wasn't a year ya were in the slammer before they killed him." Cocked his head, drank his beer, eyed him queer. "Ya slow, Kiryu-chan. Gotta listen more in prison, they musta told everyone with ears the moment it happened."

Maybe. If it was a year in, he was still too angry then to listen. Was blind, deaf, hateful towards everything.

Is this why, he asked, Majima's boys... But Majima had gone to sleep, curled on his side with his head tucked under his own arm. Protection for when the roof falls in, which seems to happen to him a lot.

Kiryu lit another cigarette, continuing his little game: this time he burned rings all up Majima's back before the man growled and flipped around.

—

—

They went from door to door like a salesman, and like a salesman was unwanted, unrequested, unadmitted, so that eventually defeated by the bankruptcy of kindness, they became instead beggars, rattling their tin cans for the alms of a safehouse.

Majima, a lion who's lost his pride (only one kind, never the other), threatened to nip their ears and claw off their faces, but always they had that other answer: sorry oyaji, we're more afraid of him than we are of you. We respect you but not enough. Once perhaps he had ruled by a combination of might and kindness. It'd have gone better for him if it was all might.

By mid-afternoon they hadn't found a single one of Majima's offices that would let them in. They were always the same formula. One man at the doors, picked by bad luck to tell oyaji no. The rest nestled one within the other like Russian dolls, no guts even to come to the door and say sorry. It's these that I'm gonna kill, Majima promises. When I get back on my feet I'm going to cut all their fucking cocks off.

Well he has a lot of cocks to cut then. By Kiryu's reckoning, more than a hundred, and the day was not done, nor was the week.

"Why don't you just turn me in and call it a day? You call in the favors you get from me, might get you better results."

They sat cross-legged on a bench (those rare surfaces, available only to paying customers) eating lukewarm packaged rice with bits of foreign meat one each; it was grey and lumpy but cheap.

"Eh, Kiryu-chan, ya trying to ditch me too? Not cool! I thought we were buddies - fighting buddies!"

"I don't call people who use me as a punching bag, a buddy."

"That's 'cuz ya weak. If you're more punch and less bag, could be we're different. Well I can't. Instructions to wait. Politics, ya know? Gotta use you as a trump. Or maybe keep ya hush-hush from someone up high?"

"So the person behind this isn't all that high up?"

"Oooh, sneaky, Kiryu-chan!" He waved a finger. "Ya find out, it won't be from me. Now fuck off. Ya ruining my lunch with questions."

Kiryu can wait; he can poach answers bit by bit from Majima's carelessness. Patiently, they unfurled themselves and sailed towards Majima's most reluctant destination.

They went, wading thickly, into the depths of Kamurocho. The rain came in bursts and stops and drizzled all day, but it didn't faze the roaring crowd of people who came pouring out of subway lines and out of shops, into offices and out of malls. They had each their personal universe - phones on the right ear or earphones on both - and in between not talking to each other ads bombarded them on all sides, silently selling, screaming in colors: discounts, sales and more, which Kiryu saw and Majima ignored, as did everyone else.

The crowd walked in the opposite direction to them often, with angry sets to their faces; Kiryu thought at first it was because of him and Majima, standing in the middle of the streets while Majima oriented his terrible sense of direction, but it could be something else, bubbling in the privacy of their interiors. It was a disorienting, loud, garish world that he'd been taken unwillingly back to.

To get where they had to go they needed to cross the city, Kiryu following behind like a golden calf, Majima leading them but lost himself.

How long you haven't been here? Kiryu asked. How long have you been gone, that you lost your men and your direction? Which coat did you leave your respect in?

Majima didn't answer him because he didn't ask the questions.

By and by they came at last to the 56th floor of a tall building, a black skyscraper making good on the threat to gore the skies, and Majima knocked on the door, thickset and heavy, once expensive and rich still, planted on sinking carpets. They shared neighbours up and down with corporate types, a hundred employees easily in the kind of space they had. Majima's office took up an entire floor, gave no one else space for arguments.

"Yo! Anyone in?" He said, banging loudly. There is a keypad, but no hope that Majima might know (or remember) any code to his own place.

The door, armed with an ecosystem of its own, turned back slowly one lock after another until the peeping hole came through.

"Hullo? Who's there? Ehh — oyaji!?"

"Nishida! Ya in! Good boy! Ey, get the fuckin' thing open!"

Kiryu expected no. They got yes. The locks unlocked themselves one by one until the door swung open. A mousy man stood in the doorway, clenching and unclenching his hands. He's trying not to cry (has the kind of face like it does this often - trying not to cry) but does not know where to put his hands. Does he hug oyaji? Will he be killed if he tries?

Majima solved it: brought his head down with a headbutt, forehead-to-forehead, ruffled the man's hair like a dog. Shoved him around - but joyfully.

"Oi Nishida! What the fuck, Nishida! Can't believe ya in. How long it's been! Oi this place still nice and clean, what the hell. Nishida, ya been cleaning up more mess than asses? Fuckin' A!"

No one can tell if he was happy or pissed; possibly both. The office was in good condition. It had been sumptuously decorated at some point with the most expensive end of modern-furniture catalogs, speakers up to the ceiling, bookshelves crammed full of collector's editions, limited editions, movies a thousand in each. At some point the room had been betrayed too: a line of bullet holes on one side, punched in deeply.

"How's things? How's things?"

They stripped themselves of their weather-eaten clothes, threw their jackets over the couch. Men begin to pour in from the other room, pounding backs, squealing like joyful rats, chanting oyaji oyaji oyaji is back. A locker room scene surrounding a victory: the return of Majima-san. They lifted Majima, crested him on a wave. A hundred hands reaching their own small god.

Kiryu let himself be pushed to the periphery, he had no place in their jubilation. Majima had returned, all will be well now...

Kiryu let himself be carried until he found the doors to the kitchen, and there he sat and watched them, all six stages of grief and celebration. By the time Majima found him again it was late evening and he'd singlehandedly demolished a whole six-pack of beer and someone's turkey dinner. Stealing food, Majima said, stealing food himself, drawing out a leg Kiryu had left him and biting deep into bone.

"Good to be back?"

"Hell yeah! I thought I was gonna have to punch through this door, and with what it cost me ya can be sure I ain't looking forward to that." He chewed, loudly like a boy. A shred of turkey stuck to his chin and nose. "Nishida, whadya know. Good ol' Nishida. Loyal to a fault, is what he is."

"You've got good men."

"The best boys!"

They licked off every juice and tendon of the turkey, then discarded piece by piece all their clothing in front of the shower and washed it all off. Kiryu, just grim. Majima possibly more: fear, anticipation, anxiety, betrayal, each taking fifteen minutes to scrub off, not a minute less.

Majima came out of the shower shiny and wet, towelling himself in those hard to reach places. He watched Kiryu watch him wiping long toes on the mat, went - what?

"Why ya lookin' at me like that?"

"Any reason I shouldn't? Only one view in here. Not keen on floor tiles."

"I ain't askin' ya why ya looking straight, I'm asking ya why — never mind. Hey, been a while! How about we do this?"

How they do this: Majima pulled off the shower curtain, the cold metal of the pole, and in a storm of rubbery subterfuge damned near broke Kiryu's spine before he'd untangled himself from the curtains. Laughing all the while: Come and get it, Kiryu-chan! On sale, special, discounts for ya only! Kiryu surprised him, managed to get in a fist good enough to displace Majima's nose.

Oi what's this, he sneered, the baby dragon punches back! And Kiryu swept, with his feet, knocking him on his ass, climbing onto him; hit him hand over fist again and again until he realized he was sprouting a fucking boner and he needed to stop.

Majima, lying wet and bleeding from the head, laughing so hard he was splitting apart, sexier than the best host you could ask from Starlight.

"Oh my god, that's good! Ya need ta hit me more, Kiryu-chan! Hey? Hey? Don't go showerin' now, we ain't even got to the good part! Ya clean enough!"

He is not clean. He is very far from clean. Kiryu turned on the shower as loud as it would go, and hid in the cover it provided, cowering over his unruly cock. Majima going hey, hey, hey outside his glass door. Kiryu's ears hearing something else, hearing more, more, more. He saw instead of greenish-blue bathroom tiles, Majima with his feet splayed and his ass in an uncoiled towel, groaning over pain (but how easy to imagine something else).

He came out shamefaced and stony. Their bags were already packed. No one knew what they contained; it'd all been Nishida's work. Nishida and Majima huddled in the kitchen, trading news and plans.

"Going somewhere?" Kiryu asked.

"Yeah, empty safehouse we still got."

"How come."

"Ain't safe here for my boys. Not if I was around. Yer boyfriend got a damned hard-on for me, won't stop can't stop til I'm dead. We're camping out elsewhere. Week tops and I turn ya in."

He shrugged on the bags, shouldered all of them. He'd rather keep Majima's hands where they were safe - on his knife. A strange man, Majima, he thought. Why not hide in his stronghold, like a normal person? Simply because his boys would be safer without? Who cares about the _fuhyo_? If they can't be promoted, they don't mean much, meat shields one and all. Kiryu should know, had had the best education.

He didn't say it. Majima was so damned proud of his brood; these useless chicks of his. It'd only ruffle his feathers. If they weren't trash why would they be losing?

Lead the way then, he said, and followed Majima. A week tops, it was promised.


	4. Chapter 4

They camped out in a one-room apartment with no frills. Four walls and a floor, a small kitchen. It had water but no electricity, and their nights became impenetrable darkness spent on a cold tatami floor, ridden with confident roaches and shy rats. There was a stack of bills that told them why: the mailbox had been jammed so full it'd laid bloated with a brick of unpaid invoices.

"Kind of a miserable place," Kiryu said.

"How 'bout you sleep outside then, like the dogshit yer are," Majima shot back, marking his territory with a thin rolled up mattress that smelt moldy and was so.

The cold is intense, bone-biting. Nipped them like their teeth on turkey bone, grazing light, not enough to kill but hurting bad. Has it always been this cold? Or was it that he'd always had it good? He remembered colder days but he had had shelter. Spent the time in Kazama-san's office, camped out beside the radiator. Or else with Nishiki, eating ten hot bowls of ramen each and competing to see who can do it faster. Loneliness is foreign...

Majima exists but is fading rapidly. He has gone into his imaginary future, plotting uncharted waters that didn't matter to Kiryu, because he didn't exist in them.

But it's alright. If Kiryu wants to relieve his loneliness he only has to wait. Park himself silent and quiet in the apartment like a flytrap, until Majima forgets about him. In the middle of the night, Majima will open up, crawling over the few feet of space between them, until sleepily he'd find Kiryu and doze off stuck to him like a patch, drooling on his shoulders. Mumbling again sad things, increasingly incoherent, increasingly irrelevant to Kiryu. Kiryu laid, as still as an object, absorbing the contact and storing it in his cells, mitochondria, like energy.

When he had too much energy he went out to pick fights. Fights were plenty to be had in Kamurocho. You can get them 8-in-a-pack, buy 10 get 10 free, selling fast and hot around street corners where delinquents squat like small predators. They find instead a larger predator (once, an apex), stalking them across the alleys. Not a vigilante, just intensely bored. If they knew fear, if they were smart enough to know fear, they go, slipping off into backstreets to spread rumors: it's not so good to be around that place. Already a few dozen of them down with broken bones.

Sometimes Majima joined him, when he didn't disappear to conference with an anonymous payphone or to run his millions of errands. They made a team. Good team, even. Majima was smart and reckless, always the first in, gave chase, screamed like a banshee, attracted attention, fireworks. By contrast Kiryu was the slow and patient tide, swallowing everyone Majima had left behind, crunching bones, a high calcium intake, one by one all they find.

"Delicious", Majima said, pocketing the change. "Let's go get some food on this bling."

They consume: liters of ramen soup, kilograms of bone-meal sausages, gallons of refillable hot tea, a cow's weight in beef and rice.

"So what's your plan after." Kiryu said.

"Oh, oh? Why'd ya ask? Ya wanna come along for the ride, Kiryu-chan?"

"Doubt your contact's letting me go anywhere."

"Well not in a fucking limo they won't. Ya gettin' the works. Won't come back until ya have a crown, eh? Prodigal son. Don't go forgetting who kicked your ass in your new britches. Ya need to remember always who fucked ya up good, even on the winning side."

"Doubt I'll forget you."

"Whazzat."

"Don't know many one-eyed guys, is all I'm saying."

"That's sad, Kiryu-chan! That's making me sad! Makes me think all I am to ya is a pretty face. Remember the neck-crack at least. That's my best move."

A pretty face, and an unpredictable maelstrom of hate. Fists, teeth, steel-tipped shoes lashing out in the dark. No reason, just a lot of hate. Majima had a lot of issues, and could only work them out in the inks of violence. Kiryu took it, gave some back, and thought: enjoy this while it lasts. Someday I'll break you like a fucking egg, unless you give me a good reason not to.

Kiryu identity, which he'd cast off and ironed out of himself, came back to him in bits and pieces. The more bones he crushed, the more jaws he break, the more it came back to him, slipping like the wind through a large empty house, howling down its halls… A ghost of a ghost of a person he didn't much like.

The night before the scheduled meeting with his contact, Majima said to him: 'We gotta go. I gotta save some of my boys."

"Who?"

"Tagawa got his nads caught in with a gang. White one. Lots of gangs around here now, white-red-blue like they think they Americana."

"Tagawa." He thought. "The guy who first turned us out."

"Yah. You packed?"

"Don't need much except my fists. I pack light. Why are we saving someone who threw us out?"

"'Cuz he needs saving, and he's one of my boys. Like I keep sayin' but no one listens - only I get to kick their asses. Now let's git."

Principles, that's the thing, huh? What a bitch. Well, he went, he had nothing to look forward to except a cold room. They waded knee-deep into a fight, five of Majima's boys against twenty five punks in white wifebeaters and basketball paraphernalia. They wore their caps backwards, so Kiryu handed them their ass backwards. Methodically dismantled them one by one. Majima off elsewhere being Majima, laughing the house down, cutting three men at one go.

When they were done they didn't stay. Majima looked at his strays, spoke in volumes: I saved you when you would have let me die. On the steps, even. Does it feel good? To be caught with your pants down and lo - ya had no balls.

Nothing else to be said. To be done. Back then, home, to the little shithole.

If Majima had dreams that night, they were kind to him, for once.

—  
—

They were to meet Majima's contact (who still anonymous, was about to become less so) at Shangri-la, a top-of-the-line whorehouse that had sprouted while Kiryu was out of the picture. A fancy place, deserving fancy treatment. Majima spun Kiryu's grey suit onto him. Take it and go. Ya won't be coming back here.

"Ready, ready," Majima said, brimming with nervous energy. His knife danced inside his jacket, hand exploratory and patting it, afraid to misplace it. The knife is an organ, but you have to be careful. You never know when you might find your heart in the wrong place.

They went into the whorehouse and it was empty, utterly silent, the only sound a steady drip-drip of an older pipe. Someone else had left their radio on, and the highest note of a jazz hit came through from upstairs. It was afternoon, nothing special, perhaps all the whores were sleeping. Unlikely. Someone had paid, said go, and having said, had seen it be so. Majima brought him to a hall, ground floor and set back, with a small stage for events. There were round tables about a dozen, covered in red tablecloths; at some point there might have been a banquet for a hundred horny men. Might be it hasn't happen, and lies strictly in the future.

They waited, Kiryu on a chair and Majima leaning against a table, playing knife tricks one after another until he'd worked through his repertoire. Majima's nervous. He is a novice at this. Kiryu could have waited forever.

When the man came, announced partially bit by bit by swinging doors, tapping heels, knocking doors, furniture bumping gently, it was someone only one of them expected.

"Kazama-san."

It was him that Kiryu had expected. The years had aged him, bleached him like bone, dyed him white, drawn lines on his face like borders, segmenting cuts of his face. But still, Kazama-san. O Father, father. He who had been more to Kiryu than anyone else, whose shadow he had traced into the orphanage's sand and thought: the man I want to be. Limping on a stick more pronounced now, a briefcase in his other hand. Gloves, as always. No fingerprints, he'd said.

"Kiryu," He said. "Too long."

They went, came together in a fierce hug, Kazama one arm around him and him both arms around the older man (father, father!) squeezing tight enough to break bones. Kazama-san, he thought, and unexpectedly found he could cry.

"You're back, at last. It's been too long."

"It should have been longer."

"Hmm, that may be so, but we need you around here."

"Nishikiyama?"

"Yes. We'll talk later. First." He clapped a strong hand on Kiryu's shoulder, and dismissed him, turning to Majima. Majima sat stony, scowling, the point of his knife held against a gloved fingertip, a small cut.

"Ya ain't who's supposed to show up." Majima said.

"A change of plans. You'll get your reward all the same."

"Huh. Is that right?"

"That table over there, you'll find it under it."

Majima goes, finds hidden in the many legs of table-and-chair a briefcase, filled to the brim with bricks of cash, raw, white-washed. "Seems right," He said, bouncing a brick left-right on both hands, still suspicious. "Though. Ya seemed surprised when ya came in. How come if ya know the deal, ya surprised?"

Kiryu noticed. He never once dropped his contact's name. In this he was careful. An idiot, to be more careful with others than himself. Who does that, walking onto a train with a warrant out for him and no disguise, but clenching secrets tight-tight to his teeth because they're others'? Goddamned idiot.

"I didn't expect… He would hire you. I've told him before I have no great fondness for hounds."

"Didn't seem that way ta me. When you— "

"There's a place and time for hounds."

Ah, Kiryu thought, here comes.

He stepped in front of Kazama before he even heard the click, before he even understood - had thought out - what he was doing. What _was_ he doing? He had no fucking clue. He'll think this out later. First, he stared down the barrel of Kazama's silencer, into the twin holes of the gun.

"Kiryu?"

"Would prefer if you don't." He looked sideways, saw nothing; Majima was behind him and hidden from view. He only had a gun to look at, and Kazama's estrangement, his confusion.

"Explain."

"I'll deal with him myself."

"Deal cleanly." Kazama turned the gun around, gave it to him grip-first. He pushed it away, thought better, and took it.

"How long have you bought this place out?" Kiryu asked.

"Twenty-four hours."

He turned around then, and bore down on Majima who looked at him with sullen eyes, defeated, accepting, knowing he'd been outmaneuvered. He couldn't outfight two men and a gun, _if _it was only one gun in the game. Kazama wouldn't have left the house without at least two. Majima had been a fool of course: Kiryu could have told him to bring his boys with him, at least two loyal or cowed, to be protection and shields. But he wouldn't have listened, would he? His boys are more important than himself, to him. Well now he has to pay for it.

With practiced rusty hands he shot Majima below the kneecaps, and the man - true to his caliber - keeled over with nothing more than a pained gasp. Later perhaps when he and Kazama are gone, Majima can whine in pain (and peace). For now if he must lose, he won't give them the satisfaction of hearing it from him.

Kiryu took him to the janitor's closet, shoved him in. With that leg he won't be walking a week, and that's with the help of a surgeon.

"Let's go," He told Kazama-san.

"Let's. I've booked your favorite restaurant, just for you. Welcome back, Kiryu."

He lowered his eyes, smiled. "It's good to be back."

—  
—

As a child, Kiryu had known instinctively the measure of the man he would be, had grasp perhaps as young as three or as old as five, that he would grow up one day and wholly subsume the personality of Kazama-san.

The trouble was learning more about the man that he's supposed to be, and also learning if there was any part of himself that he would like to keep, one each in a neatly labeled archival-quality box, to be taken out some days and turned around slowly in nostalgic sunlight, thinking: ah, this was who I am.

Kazama-san is enigmatic. That's what makes it hard to become him. To the children of Sunflower he is as a god-king, who comes to walk among them mere mortals, and having walked dispense gifts and favors, arbitrate injustices, mete out judgement, finance punishments. He came from a foreign, formless land that none of them have ever seen. Upper-Tokyo, the children had said, was a city built by Americans and had no rivers, no subways, and its people drank only beer, for chlorine would poison them, murder them - woe.

Well, that may be so, but there are other things of Kazama-san that you can see, regardless of whether you believe what's said of him. You can see in the well-cut shoes and the fitted coat, the soft dove-like gloves one on each hands, the mysterious drops of inks splattered on his skin (perhaps an office job) that he was someone that mattered. Someone great, someone who'd flown very close to the sun.

As Kiryu grew older, it became easier to guess the kind of person he should be.

Kazama-san goes away sometimes for example, and orders mysterious things into one-use phones at strange people, who sometimes come one-two-three to annoy him while he's visiting, always with that pretext: urgent, sir. There has been an issue that only you, can fix. Only you. It's not so hard to guess then, the kind of person Kazama-san was: yakuza, high up the ladder, with his court of old soldiers and young thugs. A king in other words. Now Kiryu knows he must be king.

But what kind of king is he? This is the question that preoccupies him for most of his younger life, doodled in the margins of his wiry notebooks. Instead of the names of girls (who are irrelevant, he had never had time for anyone who couldn't break his jaw), this strange question: WHICH KING.

King perhaps benevolent as Kazama-san was to them, the little mites at Sunflower, whom he looked upon with pleasure, kindness, but unmistakable boredom? A plain smile rather amused. "Look," Nishiki says, he's waiting to see our pedigree. He's waiting to see which of us breed true. Truly?

"Truly," said Nishiki.

They have fantasies, taken out of badly abridged ideas of Great Expectations. One day they will be the ones that Kazama-san pluck out, hand-picked from his crop, brought somewhere else to be something great, whatever it is. In the meantime they grow the only way they know, to become young thugs - because what is a king but a glorified thug?

Nishiki's idea comes first half-formed and baked crustily, that to be King is to be armored as one: gold, glory, glamour. An incoherent philosophy, but it came down to the fact that to be king you must dress-act-live as one. Doing whatever it takes to climb far enough that you can live that way, trampling infidels underfoot, dealing under heavy banquet tables. Is this true? Is this what it means? Kiryu reserved his judgment, not out of wisdom, but out of ignorance. Nishiki's ideas are too complex for him. All he knows is that he wants to hurt people, but only the right kind of people, and Kazama-san can tell him which kinds. The rest if it comes, can cohere later.

Maybe if he'd thought about it more. Too late. Well then. Which king?

Kiryu's idea comes second. By then he and Nishiki had became young kings-in-waiting. Another girl too, even more ruthless than the two of them (dead now, a bungled job). To be a King, he learned, is to wield an axe as one. To go amongst men and cut them down for being lesser, that they may fear you more than the enemy. Anything (anybody, too) to stay, go further, ever higher, amassing, growing, twisting and turning, in beds ever larger and grander, ostentatious, unable now to escape your castle-prison forever. You can't learn this kind of thing from the outside, can you?

"Who?" He would ask Kazama-san. Who, and how? Kazama-san gripping him on the shoulder with righteousness: "All of them."

Later a thought: he'd forgotten to look for parts of himself that he'd like to keep. Well, it is too late now.

—  
—

They came out of the mist, Kazama-san and he, clopping out of a warm limousine into the warmer interiors of a ramen store, itself waiting with more mist - the foggy offerings of hot ramen broth. "Ah, ah, smells excellent," Kazama-san said, and took randomly a seat at one of the booths. From 4 a.m the tonkotsu had been boiling for them and no one else.

They ate, Kiryu enjoying non-grey ramen for the first time since his return to Tokyo (really, the food Majima ate, it was a wonder he was alive) and thought: this is more like it. It's sunnier on this side. The soup ladled quickly, no one else to serve, and he ate two bowls for every one of Kazama-san, who looked fondly at him and said: ah, young appetites.

Kiryu's ninth bowl half-finished, he pushed it aside and asked, "So how's things?"

"First let's talk about the important things." Kazama said. "Let's talk about the dog."

Somehow he knew this was coming. "Yes. Of course."

"About why you spare him. Tell me."

"I haven't heard what you've got to tell me yet. Could be he's useful, when I'm done hearing." said Kiryu.

"Is he? His family is in shambles."

"Loyal shambles."

"Not so loyal, that I heard."

"Perhaps, but loyal enough, when they're not terrified. Possibly useful, as I said."

"And if he isn't?"

"Then I go back, and this time I don't miss."

Kazama pondered this, rotated the thought around, said: "Very good. For a moment I thought prison has made you soft."

"Prisons don't usually do that."

"You could be different. You have always been different. Let's talk business then, now that we know you haven't gone soft."

He heard tall tales, of a Nishiki and a Nishikiyama-gumi, grown too high and becoming bothersome, like reedy weeds. Cruel, ruthless, calculating. Such trite words to describe multifaceted evil. Ambitions that encroach on other people's ambitions. But why did Kazama expect differently? He was the one who made them… Well. More. Nishikiyama, wanting with impunity out of turn to be chairman. Methods? Old. Kill everyone in the way.

War, as old as time.

"War, then?" He asked. "You brought me back for this?"

"Yes. I'll have people for you. Soon, but not yet. Your return came earlier than expected, and I haven't had the chance."

"I see."

"Lie low until then."

"I'll be fine. I have people."

Kazama raised a brow. "You do?"

"The dog's."

"You're not serious…? Kiryu, please. You were equals. You will be throwing rocks at his guns. Lie low."

"More like bringing a knife to a gunfight," He smiled. "If it's just one gun and one knife, there are some knives I'll bet on."

"I can't stop you," Kazuma said, pleasantly. "I'll prepare the men for you. You can have them once they're ready, if you're alive."

"I'll try to be."

"My money will be on you."

They were done then, just pleasantries left: turf lines and borders, how they'd shifted since Kiryu was around, the dissolution and establishment of new families, their circumstances, strengths, flaws. The little dinky-chinks in their armor. This is familiar and pleasant, as it'd always been between them, since Kiryu was old enough to hold a gun with one hand and crush heads with the other. It saves you the time of talking about things that don't matter; the royal estate must be tended to.

Time came; said it was over. They rose and shook off the kinks of a body hunched over war plans, hours of it, shook hands and hugged, both fondly, tearfully almost; Kazama handing him the briefcase, said: a welcome back present. Kiryu takes it and knows without seeing that it's a gun, two of them from the weight. "I prefer my fists," He said. Kazama smiled, knowing his preference.

"But times have changed," he said. Many more pieces than they used to be. Kiryu will like it or he can die.

"Thanks, then."

They parted ways on the pavements. Night had fallen, no rain but the pavements wet. The shops showed him plastic goods one by one as he passed. He was in a cheaper and more plentiful world - more guns, more pieces, more mysteries. The heat from the ramen place evaporated, so that the city became once more wet and cold and degrading. Kiryu allowed the city to move him, and it decided to move him willy-nilly into a stairwell, where he could lean against someone's unpaid bills and smoke while he thinks.

"Hey get gone," Someone said, pushing past him - a minute ago emerging from a club on the 6th floor. Outside, more people, framed by the narrow view of the alley. Hmm, hmm. He sees yakuza going by one-two sometimes, in groups of fives like little ducklings. Ugly ones. There were more of them too, but in cheaper suits and bad shoes. Too many vultures and not nearly enough pie. Or did he mean corpses? Speaking of corpses.

He cleared out, went down to the Poppo on the street corner, found that it had moved a few shops up, so that for a moment he sat stupid and blinking at a fast food places promising vegan nuggets, whatever-the-fuck that was. Poppo didn't have everything he needed, and he exited shaking a bag of beers, ten brands, one each. He figured with the kind of day Majima's had he'll like a choice. He'll have very few of these - choices - in the coming days. A pharmacy had what he needed, and a pharmacist with beady eyes thinking hmm, strange, strange indeed. He swept away the rolls of bandages, antiseptic, first aid kit, took an extra bag (the beers were threatening to tear out of their biodegradable prison) and went back to Majima.

Majima cursed up a storm the moment he came in. He'd manage to claw himself out of the closet and halfway across the room, trailing slimy evidence behind.

"Fuckin' cunt! Ya back? Why don't ya come closer, Kiryu-chan, ya bastard, so I can fuck up that damned fucking fucker face of yours —"

"You're incoherent," Kiryu said. "If you gotta swear, at least make sure you make sense."

He peeled leather pants off a putrifying wound, a tender smile when it made Majima scream. He sprayed careless disinfectant over it. "Try not to drop this. You'll need it." He said, stuffing the bag and the briefcase into Majima's hands, clawed from the pain. He makes a good hanger; cannot unwound his hands even if he tries.

"I know a guy," He told Majima, just to distract him. He carried him easy like a bride; the man is surprisingly light, just a bag of bones really, no wonder his punches only hurt so much. "Operating theater near theater street. Try to stay alive until then."

"Ya fucking got my knee asshole. If I was gonna die from a gunshot I'll pick a goddamned cooler one!"

"Keep it down, or I'll shoot you a few more times. Guy's got a deal. Three wounds count as one. You wanna cash in?"

"Fuck you!"

It's like bringing a dying hyena to the vet.

—  
—


End file.
